Making Memories: Summer Bucket List

How short the days are long
How fast the days of slow go away
So I'm wading right in, playing your games,
And I'm running the full length of summer...
By your side

I love that song by Christine Dente. For the past few years, I've really tried to make our summertimes full of interesting outings and activities, while preserving the carefree, lazy feel of summer. Sound contradictory? I think it is. On the one hand, I want my kids to relax, to have fun, to enjoy their childhood, and I don't want to over schedule their days. On the other hand, I want them to explore, to grow, to create, and to engage with life....and I don't want them to play video games or watch t.v. all day. So, how to find a healthy, fun balance?

We kick off our summers by making a "summer bucket list". Here's how it works. Everyone sits around the kitchen table, and I have a notepad. We take turns going around the table, and everyone names one thing that they'd like to do that summer. It doesn't matter how silly, extreme, or extravagant the item is...I faithfully write it down. (I also get to put my own ideas on the list on my turns.)

When we have a nice list, and everyone has had three to five turns, we hang our list on the refridgerator. We begin brainstorming on ways to make the list a reality. For example, "Go to acorn land," was suggested by my little boy. We decided a nature walk through the woods to look for acorns would be a good interpretation of this desire.

Through the summer, at the end of each week, we look over our list. We try to schedule at least one item from the list on the calendar for next week. We put a check mark by anything on the list we did during that current week. We also jot down "extras"....things that we did during the week that weren't on the list, but that we got to experience and everyone thought was really cool. Thus "pet an alligator" and "discovered pig island" got added to the list over the course of the summer.

I must also add that we are very blessed to live in an area with an outstanding public library system and an outstanding county park board. Our public libraries and the parks offer free programs throughout the summer. We always look over their programs, and the children pick out things like guided creek explorations that they'd like to participate in.

This is how I keep track of our schedule over the summer. This is a paragraph taken from my blog during August of 2008, at the end of the first summer I put this system into place.

... my plan at the beginning of the summer to do a “space camp” theme. We absolutely did that, and it went *great*. The kids really got into decorating the fridge to be our mission control center. I cut sections out of colored paper and taped them together to make on sheet of paper with five colored sections in yellow, orange, red, purple, blue. At the top of each section I wrote a day of the week, then I laminated the paper. That was our dry erase board for our “shuttle flights”. Since Little Guy is working on learning to tell time, I also printed some blank clock faces, cut them out, and laminated them as well. For each “shuttle flight” I used sticky tack to put a clock face on that day, and drew clock hands to show what time we were leaving the house for that outing. We also each had a “pre-flight routine” and a “landing procedure”…which were our checklists for our morning and afternoon tasks. I got foil star stickers and kept a sheet of them on the fridge. Each day, when the kids finished the items on their lists, they put a star next to that item. At the end of the week, whoever had the most stars, got to pick a special activity that we all did together (like family game night, bike riding, pick a movie from blockbusters, make cookies, etc). And if they tied in their number of star points, or came close to tying, they each got to pick an activity. The whole system worked so well, and was enjoyed so much, we going to continue it through the school year.

This summer, I'm doubly challenged, because this summer, for the first time, we have a Wii and each child has their own Nintendo DS games. I have some thoughts on what I might do to balance active play and enriching activites (like reading and art) with their video game time. But, I'll save that for another post.

In the meantime, here is our "bucket list" for this summer:

--go to China (this is from the same child who said "go to acorn land" last year)
--go to COSI
--visit Serpentine Mound
--go to the Children's Museum
--meet an alien
--see some buffalo
--see Pig Island
--go miniture golfing
--go bowling
--Acorn Land again!!!
--make chocolate
--learn orienteering and go Letterboxing
--go on the slip and slide
--make apple pie
--set up a sundial
--go to a mall
--go to a waterpark
--visit a historic village
--go to the movies
--climb a tree
--make homemade ice cream

Have fun making your own "summer bucket list"!

For the Making Memories introduction and guidelines, please click here.

Making Memories: Web Meme Launch

Tell me about the time when.....

Growing up, I always loved hearing my mother tell stories of her adventures, and misadventures, when she was younger. She could tell stories about her brother, or stories that her mother told her as well. I loved hearing them and would ask for my favorites over and over. What a rich treasure these stories were.

Recently, I've noticed that my own children have been asking for stories of things I did when I was a girl, and, more encouragingly, stories of things they remember, or barely remember, from their own childhood.

We strive to do so many things as parents. We want to raise, to nurture, to love, to teach, to cherish our children. Yet I also want my children to grow up with stories, good stories, of their own. I want their childhood to be a rich tapestry of memories. Life can get so busy, so overscheduled and so hectic. I don't want their childhood to be completely lost in regimen and routine.

So last summer, and the summer before that one, we started a tradition of making a "summer bucket list". And since then, I've been mindful of trying to create memorable experiences in the midst of our ordinary, everyday lives. I've written about a few of them, like building fairy houses, before.

This summer, I want to invite others along the journey with me. I love reading the ideas and adventures other families have. Bloggers are such a creative and interesting group of people, and I would love to read some of unique ways other are Making Memories with their children.

Please consider being a blessing to myself and others by sharing some of your own stories. Be blessed by reading suggestions and activities that others share. Please join us in a twice monthly blog meme designed to share the many ways in which we are all Making Memories.

Making Memories Meme Guidelines

Why: Because the times we have to spend with the children we love goes by all too quickly. The days are fleeting, the hours are few, and too soon they are grown.

Who: Parents, grandparents, caregivers, aunts and uncles. Anyone who desires to spend some quality time with the special child(ren) in their lives.

What: An opportunity to get and share ideas for child-friendly fun, activities, projects, and adventures. What you share can be a quick project, tips for a vacation or a road-trip, or a way of making an ordinary outing fun and memorable. What you share can be just for fun or it can have some educational or other value. As long as it's something you think the kids you know will look back on and treasure. Please share your ideas with the purpose of enabling another family to repeat your success.

When: Twice a month in the summer. I'll launch the web meme on the 1st and 15th of June, July, and August. Through the school year, this will likely drop down to once a month.

How: On the first and fifteenth of the summer months, I'll post my own Making Memories idea. At the bottom of my post, I'll have a linky tool. If you have an idea to share, please post a link to your own blog. Please make sure the link goes directly to the relevent blog post, and not just to your blog in general, so that readers can easily find what you'd like to share. Also, in your own post, please include a link back to my making memories post, so that your readers can enjoy others' ideas as well.

What about you? For this first round of sharing, please tell us about how you are planning on spending some of the summer. Do you have a typical summer kick off? Or do you have special routines or a system to balance "screen time" with more enriching activites? Do you have any insights concerning how to balance keeping your children active with preserving the spirit of the vacation days of summer?

Coming Soon....

These are the things I'm thinking about blogging about. Yes, that's how lame this post is. It isn't about anything in and of itself, its just about something that might be about something at some point in the future.

First of all though, a little girl whom has been on the hearts of my family and in our prayers just received a new heart last night. They did the transplant overnight. I can't imagine what a long night that must have been for the mother. The little girl went through the proceedure well, and is now in recovery. I can't write about anything else without getting that news out first. It will still be several weeks before they are sure that her body will accept the new heart.

With that said, I shall move on to far less critical issues.

Here are somethings I'd like to blog about. I'm just listing them out here, and organizing my thoughts

--I'd like to start a Making Memories blog meme for the summer. If I get my act in gear, I can launch it in the upcoming Homeschool Showcase over on Wierd, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. The deadline is May 30. (Hear that, self? Deadline.)

--I have a bunch of pictures of a pinata in various stages of completion awaiting a "how to make a pinata" post.

--I am perhaps crazy for the amount of work I put into the birthday parties for my kids, especially since I have two birthdays back to back. Further thoughts may or may not be forthcoming.

--I have an idea for how to regulate the amount of video games and screentime my kids engage in over the summer. Will it work? Who knows. Its another one of my brilliant ideas. Either it'll be a smashing success or a crash and burn failure. I never seem to have mediocre ideas.

--I have my own take on the Proverbs 31 woman, specially rewritten for a homeschooling mom. Or at least or me.

That's just five things. Not bad. Typity type. Typity type.

Ah, look, here's a Linky test. Could some kind soul help me test by posting a link to any family friendly blog post?

Ooooo....I'm surfin my life away....

I am ONE load of laundry away from being done with laundry for the week. The load is done and sitting in the dryer....but here I am blog surfing.

I am rationalizing this little slothliness by trying to pass this off as "teacher planning time."

See, I even found some math games to check out later.

I'm a regular workhorse I am.

Paddle-to-the-Sea, lessons 6-11

You can find our first 5 lessons here.

6. Paddle Meets a Sawmill

We briefly discussed diameter and what it meant that the log Paddle was stuck to was 4' thick. (In retrospect, I should have had the kids make a circle with a 4' diameter on the floor with yarn. Hindsight.) We talked about the spikes on the loggers boots and how the bull chain worked. We thought of other examples of a chain and gears or other examples of conveyer belts. We didn't have anything to build a bull chain or a conveyer belt with, but we did get out the K-Nex set and build some gear assemblies.

7. Paddle Meets a Friend

We studied the diagram of the sawmill in the book and talked about what happened at each part of the process. We talked about why the Frenchman dropped Paddle back into the river and why he added something to the message carved in Paddle's canoe. Then the kids each drew a detailed diagram of a factory from their imaginations.

8. The Largest Lake in the World

During the reading we discussed migration a little as we talked about the bird that landed on Paddle to rest. After the reading we did a lot of mapping. We had already traced the outlines of the five Great Lakes and the St Lawrence River during our activites for lesson 2. Now, I got their maps back out and they labeled Lake Nipigon, Lake Superior, and the Provence of Ontario. We reviewed some of the facts about Lake Superior. Then we marked Paddle's starting point, and used a pencil to draw in Paddle's route so far. "That's it?" asked Toa. "That's all he's gone? He has a long way to go!"

9. Paddle Crosses Two Borders

We discussed what driftwood was and the different types of grain. We talked about all the foods that can be made from various grains. We used a red colored pencil to trace the U.S/Canada border on our maps. We colored a dark green area around Lake Nipigon to show the tall pine forests. We colored a light green area in central Canada to show the grain fields. We drew a tiny railroad from the grain fields to Thunder Bay. We traced more of Paddles short route so far.  I was going to do a cooking project with them, finding and using a recipe that called for many different kinds of grains....but the house was overflowing with muffins, cookies, cake, and brownies, so we skipped the cooking project.

10. Life in a Northern Marsh

After the reading, we made a list of all the plants and animals that Paddle encountered in the marsh. We looked through magazines (a friend had given us a number of National Park and National Wildlife magazines) and we cut out pictures of those plants and animals. The kids each made a collage of the plants and animals of a northern wetland.

11. Paddle Finds One End of Lake Superior

Back to the map to label Minnesota and Wisconsin and to draw more of Paddles route. We put red dots on the map for the cities of Duluth and Superior. We started a rust science experiment in four clear plastic cups. We labeled the cups "control", "air and water", "no air, no water," and "water, no air". Then I cut four sections of steel wool approxiamately equal sizes. (Plain steel wool, not S.O.S pads coated in cleanser). We placed the control in its cup without doing anything to it. We soaked the two 'water' sections with 5 mL of water each, and then wrapped the "water, no air" tightly in plastic wrap before putting it in its cup. Likewise, we wrapped the "no air, no water" in plastic wrap and put it in its cup. The "air and water" section, nicely soaked, went into its cup as well. We set all four cups on the kitchen window sill, since we do most of our projects in the kitchen. It might have been interesting to do another set of four cups to place someplace dark. So far, we've had to pour a little more water in the "air and water" sample because it keeps drying out. Yeah, yeah, sue me for sloppy science. Before we put the steel wool away, we snipped off a tiny bit of it and the kids grabbed some magnets. We talked about how the steel wool was made from iron and was, therefore magnetic. Finally, we headed downstairs and listened to a cd called Listening to the Loons, part of a series called Solitudes. (Before reaching the western end of Lake Superior, Paddle drifted past a mostly wilderness border and encountered some loons. I think the loon has such an interesting sound, I wanted the kids to hear it.)

Weekly Wrap-Up: Paddling Away

First I need to sing a little freedom song. I'm so happy to no longer feel constrained to our old curriculum. We're still using it for Sweetling's history, literature, and vocabulary, but we've come out from under what had gotten to be a burden.

So last week and this week and the week before that, since I haven't updated in a while, we started reading Paddle-to-the-Sea together. I'm really pleased with the lessons and activities we're doing with it. Here is what we've done so far. I especially like the hands-on activities, that's been really good for Toa of Boy, and the family involvement has started to engage Sweetling again too :)

Last Thursday (remember, haven't updated for a while) was the end-of-the-year picnic for our co-op. My sister came along and helped me run an egg drop, which was a big success. Here are the rules I wrote for the contest. I think it went really smoothly, organizationally, but it did take a little longer than anticipated. We started inside-- after the kids had signed up by grade level, I had all the participants sit at one long table in the cafeteria with their projects. Smurf and I went through and checked each project. We had a few that didn't quite fall in the guidelines, so we agreed that those projects could participate, but would receive a slightly lowered prize category. So after we checked in projects, we headed outside for the drop.

The kids loved it. We did the first drop at about four feet or so. We used the top of a chain link fence as our height marker. The kids all lined up, everyone held their project at the same height as the fence, and took a step or two back. We all dropped together on the count of three. Then each project had to be opened, and the egg checked, its status marked, and the egg replaced (substituting any cracked eggs for new eggs.) This part of the drop took a little longer than I anticipated (and the start of the drop didn't happen as early as I was hoping, since we didn't get started on cleaning the rooms right at ten either.) Still, it went pretty smoothly, since I had already arranged the sign up by grades and had columns for each drop category and symbols for the condition of the egg.

(I have to add, at the bottom of each page I had Legend: 0=intact; /=cracked; X=broken. Underneath my word "Legend", Sweetling came along and wrote "of Zelda" in pencil.)

We then went on to drop from the first set of windows, which are about 1 1/2 stories high, and then, after eggs had been checked, from the second set of windows, about 2 1/2 stories high. We had 5 out of 14 projects that had followed all the guidelines and survived the highest drop.

Sadly, since Smurf and I were running the event, I didn't get any pictures. I should have given my camera to another mom to snap photos for me, but I didn't think of it. Boo hoo :(

Also last Friday, we found a new park not too far from us with a really cool nature trail. Pinkie joined us for a nature walk there. She showed Sweetling how to pull apart a honeysuckle blossom for a tiny taste of its nectar. Since either side of the nature trail was heavily lined with honeysuckle bushes, this was an activity often repeated on our excursion. We found two snake skins and glimpsed two frogs (well, the kids glimpsed one frog, and Pinkie nearly stepped on a second frog). We also saw an interesting, as yet unidentified bird that had the strangest call. It sounded like the chirping of a car being remotely locked or unlocked. And no, I didn't have the presence of mind to photograph it so we could figure out what it was. I didn't have my camera. I took photos of the kids on my cell phone though :)

This Monday, check it out, I'm in the current week now! This Monday I went to my first ever used curriculum sale. I showed great restraint in my purchases, only spending $20 dollars...and $10 of that was even something that was on my list! Be amazed with me. I found Sweetling's science textbook with a test and solutions guide for ten dollars, as opposed to the $65 its listed for on amazon. Toa of Boy went with me, and at his request, we got several books for him....cause anytime Toa gets excited over a book, I'm excited too! For himself and by himself, he found A Treasury of Beatrix Potter, The Adventures of Frog and Toad, My Nature Journal, and Reading to Learn about Animals...which I can't find a link for. It's a workbook from Bryan House Publishers of basic reading comprehension and some phonics exercises themed around animals and animal facts. Toa picked it out and said he wanted to do it. So, we have it.

But his favorite find of all was this amazing building set. I've never seen them before. They are like a cross between legos and erector sets called Universal by FischerTechnic. These things are incredible. If you don't follow any of the other book links, follow this simple amazon link to check these out. Or read this review I just found. Here is Toa with his first construction. It's a large fan turned by a crank attached to several gears and gear shaft assembly. (Toa has also attached a blue chair to the top of the fan's tower. I don't know why or who is going to sit near the spinning blades of death, but there you go.)

This Thursday, see I'm already on yesterdays stuff! This Thursday was our first week without co-op for the summer. I declared it a "get ready for birthday parties day", since both Toa and Sweetling have their parties next weekend. We started building Toa's pinata yesterday morning. Which means that for the next several days, the only dining table we have is covered with pinata in progress. I'll post directions on how to build your own pinata after the parties, in about two weeks. In the meantime, this is the state of my kitchen table.

Don't these photos want to make you just jump right in on making your own pinata?


Check out what others have been up to in more Weekly Wrap-Ups.

Paddle-to-the-Sea, lessons 1-5

We're reading Paddle-to-the-Sea as our Geography/Science study. I know there are a lot of other lesson plans already out on the internet, but I couldn't find the "perfect" one for us....so I'm making my own.

I'm sharing what we're doing here, in case its a help to anyone else.

We're reading one chapter, which is just one page, together a day, then doing a short activity that relates to the chapter. I'm not going to include a chapter summary with each lesson. Here's what we've done so far:

1. How Paddle Came to Be
During the reading, we talked about what a rudder was and what a ballast was an how metals had differing melting points. After reading, I gave each child a bar of Ivory Soap and got out the vegetable peeler, a grater, a pumpkin carving knife, and some other misc kitchen tools. We had a quick safety lesson about how to carve away from our hands, and then they carved some rough canoes out of their bars of soap.

2. Long River Reaching to the Sea
I printed an unlabeled map of the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River. After reading, the kids traced the shoreline of each of the Great Lakes with a blue colored pencil. As Paddle goes along his journey, we'll use these to map his progress and label each lake he passes through.

3. Paddle Starts on His Journey
After reading, we looked up animal tracks in the Jedi's old Boy Scout Manuel. The kids hand drew the different types of tracks the boy found in the snow around Paddle.

4. Brook and Beaver Pond
After reading, we watched two BBC videos I had found on you tube.
This one on beavers building a dam and pond.
And then this one, about their lodge.
I was going to have Sweetling transfer the metric measurements given in the videos into standard for us, and have Toa of Boy draw a beaver lodge or a map of a beaver pond, but by the time we had read, watched the videos, and discussed them, it was time to move on.

5. Breakup of the River
For this lesson, we talked about how and why ice floats and how because ice floats, fish and other water animals can survive the winter underneath an insulating ice sheet. We talked about the composition of the water molecule and built little models with toothpicks and styrofoam pieces. First we put individual "molecules in a bowl to see how much space they would take up. Then, we took those same molecules out and started putting them together into a rough lattice work to compare how much space it now took up. (Yeah, the science isn't perfect.) Then, we filled up some plastic bathroom cups with varying levels of water. We marked the water level of each cup with a permanent marker on the outside of the cup. We put the cups in the freezer, so we could compare how much space the water will take up when it is frozen versus when it was a liquid.  

Paddle lessons continue here.

Pokemon Party

Toa of Boy wants a Pokemon Party for his birthday this year.

Ok, so I can make a 3D cake shaped and decorated like a pokeball and I can send out invitations that say "[Friend's name]....I choose you!!!!! To come to my birthday!" And I can make a pickachu pinata.

But other than that, I was rather stumped for Pokeman birthday party ideas. Pin the Tail on the Pickachu occurred to me, but I'm not sure how popular that will be with boys at the party.

Google. Google has the answer to every question. Forty-two isn't really the Answer, Google is.

From a google search then:
*PokéRinger Toss: For this Pokemon birthday party game, you'll need 2 stakes or sturdy sticks, large tossing rings or rope, masking tape or string.

Before the party, hammer 2 stakes into the ground a good distance apart. (Keep in mind the age of kids and their skill level when determining the distance.) If you find that the tossing rings are too heavy for your guests, you can make rings out of rope. Form rings that are about 10" in diameter, so they'll easily slip over the stakes.

Have the kids stand behind a masking tape or string, and invite the players to take turns tossing their rings around the stakes.

*Pikachu Stomp: It's best to play this Pokemon birthday party game outside. You'll need about 50-60 balloons and Pikachu sticker (or a small theme item). Before blowing up balloons, put a Pikachu sticker in one of them. During the game, the kids have to pop the balloons by stepping on them. A person who finds the sticker wins a prize!

Gotta Catch Them All:
Hide 32 Poke balls in the grass and have an Easter-egg hunt style game. Use permament markers to color styrofoam ball to look like poke balls.

And I really liked this one, but neither Toa nor Sweetling knew what a Baltoy was. We don't watch the Pokemon cartoon. In fact, I'm not sure Toa knows there even is a Pokemon cartoon. (Shhhhh....don't tell him!) So, I can't use the tag game below, but I think I'll come up with a more generic Pokemon version:

*Baltoy Bust: Pick one or more players to be Robots and everyone else is a Baltoy. When Robots hear the command "Get 'em", they must try to catch the Baltoy. If players get caught, they must go to a designated area called "the crying pen," where they must stand still, on one foot, until more than one Baltoy is in the pen. (Baltoy sleeps while standing on one foot, but it can't be rescued while sleeping.)

When several Baltoy are caught in the pen, they must stand with their legs spread out and pretend to cry until rescued. (Baltoy always cries in unison with others of its kind.) To be rescued, one of the free Baltoy-friends has to crawl through the captured player's legs. Keep playing the game until everyone has been caught, or it's time to move to the next game.

Egg Drop

The 6th graders are studying "Our Place in the Universe" in science at co-op. Now, all year I've thought, man...an egg drop contest would be really cool. Now I think, man, we could do an egg drop and tie it in with a lesson on unmanned space exploration to talk about the unique design challenges the Mars Pathfinder, and other surface probes, face.

Of course, tomorrow is the last day of classes, and next week is the building cleanup and picnic, but I bet I can sweet talk the co-op leadership into letting us drop some eggs out of the second and third story windows before we head out for our picnic next week. Especially if the eggs are in ziplock bags to keep them from truly going splat. (I hope).

So, rather than doing laundry or feeding my son breakfast, I've been googling egg drop projects.

Here is the rough list of rules I'm considering going by:

Grades
Contest is open to all co-op, grades first and up. Students should work as independently as possible on their own projects, though its understood that the first and second graders will need some help.

Materials and Structure
1. Each construction must be less than 12 inches on each side.
2. Each construction must have some easy means of removing and replacing an egg. (No giant balls of wound and rewound bubble wrap.)
3. No construction may use a pre-manufactured container of any kind. (So, no rubbermaid containers, small shipping boxes, etc. However, packing materials, such as styrofoam or bubble wrap or other recycled materials such as plastic straws, paper tubes, crumpled paper, may be used as cushioning. Also, you may construct your own container out of pieces cut from another container.)
4. Each construction should be an original student design. We are working on the honor system here. You may look on the internet for some ideas, but please do not simply copy someone else's design.
5. No other food items may be included in the construction.
6. Each project must be clearly labeled with the students first and last name.
7. Clear packaging tape or scotch tape is permitted to tape the project closed once the egg has been placed inside. Students should bring their own rolls of tape for this purpose.

The Egg
1. Each construction must be able to hold one chicken egg. Students should bring at least three eggs. (Two for the drop contest, and one for the rolling contest.)
2. The egg must be placed inside a ziplock bag, either sandwich or snack sized, to aid in clean up. The students should bring their own ziplock bags. Each ziplock bag should be labeled with the student's first and last name in permanent ink.
3. The eggs must be raw and unaltered. No hard boiled eggs or vinegar soaked eggs will be allowed to compete.

The Drop
1. Projects will be dropped from three heights....6 feet, the second story window, and the third story window.
2. Students may drop their own projects from the 6 foot height. Projects from the second and third story windows will be dropped by a teacher.
3. If a project hits an obstacle on the way down from a second or third story window, such as the building or the chain link fence along the school's basement windows, the drop is still valid and the results still count.
4. An egg which survives a drop completely intact, with no cracking, will be awarded the highest prize category for that drop height.
5. An egg which cracks upon impact, but does not break, will be awarded the highest prize category for the next lowest drop height. (Thus, an egg which cracks, but does not break, when dropped from the third story window will be awarded the same prize as a completely intact egg dropped from the second story.)
6. The student is responsible for removing the baggie with the egg to show to the judges. The judges have the final say in determining whether an egg is intact, cracked, or broken upon impact.
7. Once an egg breaks, that project may not compete on the next drop level. A cracked egg may be replaced, and the project may advance to the next drop level.

The Roll
1. To simulate the tumbling the Mars Pathfinder must have endured upon impact, we will also roll our projects down the outdoor basement steps at the rear of the building.
2. Students must roll their own projects down the steps.
3. Students may only give their projects one push, or one toss, at the top of the stairs.
4. Projects must make it all the way to the bottom of the stairs to qualify.
5. A project which stops before it reaches the bottom may be rerolled or re-tossed from the top of the stairs, up to three times. However, the egg inside cannot be replaced between the attempts.
6. Students may choose to do a practice roll, without an egg, if they desire. The practice roll is completely optional and does not count towards their three attempts.
7. A project which reaches the bottom on the first try does not have to be rerolled.
8. Once again, the student is responsible for removing the baggie with the egg to show to the judges, who have the final say on its condition.

Prizes for the Drop
Prizes for the drop will be awarded as followed, and are not cumulative:
1. For the 6 foot drop....a miniature candy bar.
2. For the second story drop...a full sized candy bar.
3. For the third story drop....a king-sized candy bar.

Prizes for the Roll
1. An egg that makes the roll to the bottom of the stairs completely intact, will win a full-sized candy bar.
2. An egg that makes the roll to the bottom of the stairs and cracks, but does not break, will win a miniature candy bar.

Adult Volunteers
A panel of three adult judges are needed. Also, a couple of adult assistants to help manage the contestants and the projects would be appreciated :)

Easy Cheesy

Those of you who know me know that potatoes and I don't have a very good track record. I don't know what potato spirit I offended or how I offended it, but long have I been cursed when it comes to potatoes. Monday was no exception. I'll offer you my tale of woe, for your amusement and entertainment, after I tell you of my fleeting success.

First, what I found that Works for Me:

On Monday, I made these delicious barbeque ham slices.  I really wanted some cheesy hash browns to go with them, but since I have a potato curse, haven't found a recipe that I can cook. So, feeling confident and adventurous, I decided to invent my own recipe.

What resulted was incontestably the worst kitchen failure I have ever had.

With the barbeque ham slices now ready to come out of the oven, I had no side dish. But, I did have a small sauce pan of delicious cheese sauce, so.....

I scrubbed and pricked five potatoes and started them in the microwave. I put some green beans on the stove. I turned off the oven so the ham didn't burn. I set the table, and tried to hide the evidence of my earlier failure.

About 20 minutes later, we were sitting down to a delicious dinner of bbq ham slices, baked potatoes with cheese sauce, green beans, and homemade biscuits (which just happened to be leftover from Sunday's cooking project.) Sweet, sweet success.

The Cheese Sauce that Worked:

3 or 4 thick slices of Velveeta cheese
2 or 3 tablespoons milk
couple dashes of paprika
seasoning salt to taste (or Mrs Dash for a low-sodium alternative)

Place the cheese and the milk in a small sauce pan. Cook on low heat while stirring to melt the cheese. Add seasonings and continue to stir. When sauce is smooth and warm, pour into pitcher for serving over baked potatoes.

Voila!

That's really the end of the useful information. For those of you who are wondering, no, the Jedi didn't eat the green beans. Neither did Sweetling. In fact, I asked Sweetling if I could give her some "delicious green beans." She gave me a look. The Jedi said, "Well, you could....if such a thing existed."

The potatoes that didn't work:



Notice this section doesn't get the large font size.

Potatoes have this terrible habit of refusing to cook for me. I mean it. I'm not making this up. Thus, I can't make shredded hash browns, because no matter what I do, I have shredded raw potatoes in a sauce that browning and scorching. I've tried oodles of recipes.

Over the weekend, Telephone took me to a wonderful bed and breakfast in Amish country. She bought a cookbook full of the recipes they serve and was reading it to me on our drive home. (Obviously, I was driving.) We had delicious cheesy hash brown potatoes for breakfast on Saturday, and lo, there was the recipe.

Of course, come Monday night, I didn't have the recipe, but I thought it called for so many cups of *cooked* shredded potatoes. I decided, I would beat my potato curse by shredding the raw potatoes and THEN boil them. Then, surely, it would just be a matter of dumping them into a colander before putting them back into a pot with some cheese sauce.

The resultant gray sludge of starch which I dumped into my colander was by far one of the grossest items ever to come off my stove.

But, I did have nice little saucepan of cheese sauce from the experiment.

I would say that I'm never ever trying to make hash browns again, but we all know that would be a lie.

Why my house is cluttered

I linked my Hearty Hamburgers over on Work's for Me Wednesday on We are THAT Family. While I was there, I thought I'd check out other WFMW links. There were several good ones on decluttering and organizing and spring cleaning. But what link am I going to keep? Something useful?

Silly Rabbit.

I found this. I totally want one. Maybe in a different color scheme though.

Oh, and these cool cards, even though I stink at paper folding.

House Fire---Needs

I talked to my brother again tonight. (His house burned to the ground just a few days before Easter. Fortunately, no one was at home at the time, so everyone is safe.)

He found a house to rent in the same school district that the kids had been attending and was able to manage a deposit on it. My nieces are in high school, and my nephew is in junior high.

He says that lots of neighbors and the local churches have really come together to bring his family stuff. He says the kids are doing pretty good on clothing right now, and the red cross gave them a cash card which he used to buy things like underwear and shoes for all of them.

Here are the things he still needs:

towels
bowls (like for cereal)
cups
sheets and blankets (for twin, full, or queen mattresses)
drapes and curtains (unknown sizes)
small kitchen appliances (mixer, blender…he has a microwave and toaster)
bakeware (cookie sheets, mixing bowls, mixing spoons…pots and pans and cooking spatulas are covered)

If you have an extra of anything on the list, I’ll be meeting with him this Friday (April 16th). I might also be making a second trip up on the following weekend, but that’s not definite.

I think donations of non-perishable foods, household goods, and cleaning supplies would also be appreciated.

He said they don’t need any silverware and someone already donated plates to them.
He has beds for everyone, but could use some more sheets and blankets so that they have more than one set of sheets for each bed. The mattress sizes they have are 1 twin, 2 fulls, and 1 queen.)

He has a couch, an arm chair, a kitchen table and chair, and dressers for the kids. I didn’t think to ask if he needed any lamps. I asked him for his clothing size, and his girlfriend's clothing size, but he told me they were fine, and not to worry about it.

I know its short notice, but if you have anything you'd like to donate, please bring them with you to church tomorrow night.

Please continue to keep my brother and his family in your prayers!

Thank you so much!

Summer Reading List, and other ideas

You know how I am. If I don't make a note of this right now....I'll never find it again.

Cruising through others' weekly wrap-ups and I came across a list of books I'd like to track down to read over the summer.

ooo! And Paddle-to-the-Sea!

And French Toast Matzah. We went to our first family seder this past Saturday. It was really, really interesting and neat. I don't know if we'll be keeping full Passover next year, but I definitely want to repeat the Seder.  

Weekly Wrap-Up: Gardening!

The good news is, my children do NOT hate gardening.

I decided that we were going to take an extra week of spring break to get some gardening done. I envisioned this time as a happy, wholesome, family bonding time. In the middle of Monday morning, after an hour or so cleaning up the dead material left through the winter, I realized the only thing I was accomplishing was to instill a lifelong dread of gardening in my children.

So, I broke the tasks up into smaller chunks, and made sure the kids got lots of breaks to play on the swingset. Everyone's mood was much improved. We got the garden cleaned up, weeded, and some of the soil turned over before lunch. After an afternoon of some housework and some free time, I made hearty hamburgers, fries, and zucchini chips for dinner. (If anyone has a great recipe for zucchini, I'd love to have it. Toa of Boy and I love zucchini, but I'm still looking for the perfect way to prepare it.)

Tuesday, we took a break from gardening and went to my women's small group. We also spent a couple hours working in our church's food pantry. We followed that up with a treat of lunch from Wendy's before hitting the library. That afternoon, a box of plants, which had been ordered back in February arrived. This spurred on my garden fever. (That evening, I smashed out the taillights in the van backing into a pole in the walmart parking lot. I also denting the bumper. The Jedi fixed the big smash in the bumper as soon as I got home. The next day he bought a new housing for the tail lights and replace that in less than ten minutes before our Wednesday night church activities. Today he's going to buy touch up paint to coverup the scratches I made all over the corner of the rear bumper.)

Wednesday it was back to the garden. But, as I told the kids, today was going to be much more fun. We did the hard work on Monday, so now we were ready to put the plants in. The kids had each picked out the plants they wanted when we placed our orders, so that helped them care more about the process. Toa of Boy is especially excited about his blueberry bush. (He was less thrilled to learn that it would be a couple  before the 8 inch twig actually produced any blueberries.) Again, lots of swingset breaks happened.

The access path through the strawberry patch had been covered with weeds. So, after having the kids help me pull off the stepping stones to be piled on the side, I covered the path with cardboard, since I had a stack of boxes ready to be broken down in the garage. I put a layer of pine bark nuggets over the cardboard, and then placed my stepping stones back along the path. It looks really great and it should be a weed free solution for this year. The area on the right is where the strawberries are going, the wall along the garage has some tomato cages, and the corner on the left has some perennials (sedum autumn joy, purple coneflower, and hibiscus). In that corner I also planted five asparagus plants, and filled the front of that area in with a few more spinach plants.

I did the same thing for the corner that cuts from the patio to the mulched swingset area. (My daffodils are past their bloom already, boo hoo.)

After a lunch of noodles and stirfry veggies, Sweetling and I went back out to plant our square-foot vegetable garden. We don't have a lot of sun in our yard, so our veggie garden is a two foot deep strip underneath my bedroom window. In that tiny space, we have three zucchini bush plants, two cucumber vines, 16 carrots, 9 spinach plants, and 12 or 16 lettuce plants. We've used logs to edge the raised bed, and straight sticks to mark off our grid, cause both those materials were free from windfall from all the tress we have on our wooded slope. I did move the tomato cages to the side of the garage wall, cause they were too tall to fit nicely under my bedroom window, and last year I got tired of the view out my bedroom window being the top of ugly tomato cages. Before we put the seeds in, I dug in some leaf mulch, some peat moss, some compost, and a couple handfuls of bonemeal. Sweetling did a great job of measuring out how many seeds should go in each square and planting them to the correct depth. We left a little space near the edge of the vegetable garden for some marigolds in every square. I'm hoping the marigolds deter the snacking critters who were the primary beneficiaries of our vegetable garden last year.


Thursday, Tia smurf was over. We made a delicious lunch of rice, son-in-law eggs, and stirfry chicken and asparagus in a brown shallot sauce. And when I say "we", I mostly mean the smurf. I did the complicated tasks of chopping asparagus, defrosting chicken, and peeling the hardboiled eggs (with help from Toa of Boy.)

After our wonderful meal, we had an art day. We all painted paver stones, which will be used in our sundial we'll be making in the front yard in June. I'll post about that when we do it, so that I can include pictures of the process. We need 12 pavers all together, to mark the 12 hours of the day. We decided to paint each paver with something that would correspond with the 12 months of the year as well....even though our sundial will only roughly mark the time through the day, and has nothing to do with the calendar year. But it looks cool, and that's what's important.

We took Tia Smurf home, doing some measurements in her front yard for a planting design I promised her at Christmas. We had dinner, and then while Sweetling was at Tae Kwon Do, Toa and I engaged in another art project. We each got our sketchbooks, and I got my oil pastels and Toa got his crayons. Then we set a timer (we buy our timers at the dollar store). For 6 minutes, we each drew in our own sketchbook. At the end of 6 minutes, when the timer went off, we traded sketchbooks and each of us worked on the drawing the other person had started. Toa decided ahead of time that we would each be drawing gardens. So, after many many trades, we each had a bright colorful, fantastical garden in our sketchbooks. Each garden drawing was a combination of mediums and artists, so they each turned out really cool and unique.

On Friday, we had our friends the Incredibles over, so that Mrs. Incredible could go to the Cincinnati Home School Convention. Sweetling was an AWESOME babysitter for the boys. I sat at my computer downstairs and got us caught up on logging OHVA attendance, which hadn't been done since February. (Sweetling said, "that has nothing to do with you being you or anything.") Sweetling was the Queen of the Wii, and kept the boys entertained and monitored and under control. At one point, while the Equestrian was trying to get Sweetling past some big boss in a Mario game, I heard Sweetling tell the audience of little boys, "Ok, we're going to play the quiet game now....and whoever wins gets a Hershey kiss!"

The one instruction Mrs Incredible (aka Mango) gave me before leaving was to make sure Jack-Jack, who was not in a pull-up, stayed dry. I failed at that three times. But, I have access to a washer and dryer, so Mango never need know. No one tell her. It will be our little secret. (Really, I only failed once...the second time he just had trouble wiping himself and the underwear needed changed as a result. I also, cleaning him up, realized that friendship often means wiping the poopy bottom of your friend's child while he tells you all about the two lazers he has in his garage, one on each side of his garage, in fact. The third accident was just an aiming accident while he was at or on the toilett. See, I'm not completely irresponsible.)

That afternoon, we loaded the car seats into the van and went to Blockbuster. Before we left I gave a nice talk about how the democratic process and majority rule was going to come into play when it came time to select a movie. This talk proved usless, because there, bold as life, in the Blockbuster window, was a poster for the second Chipmunks movie. Consequently, we burst into Blockbuster with a whirlwind of five excited children who were all squealing "The Squeakquel!!!" Mercifully, the Squeakquel was close to the front door, so we were in and out of there before the employees could truly hate me.

Friday night, the Jedi decided we needed a family activity. It turns out that the family activity was taking the last of the gift cards the Jedi had received for Christmas and making the half hour drive to the nearest Cold Stone for ice cream. If we ever were in a position to buy a franchise, I'd want a Cold Stone Creamery. We tried to get Vaya to get a job at ColdStone, back when they were in a nearby mall, but Vaya knew we were just trying to take advantage of her for free ice cream, and she wasn't having any of it. I'm still scarred by her refusal.

After we got home, I finished up my awesome, awesome week by getting a school schedule together that I hope will be a decent hybrid of the k-12 curriculum we need to finish up this year and the new approach to schooling I want to initiate next year.  I am as happy as I can be with the hybrid. (Thursdays are our co-op days, so they didn't need to go on the schedule. Tuesday morning we're at church for my women's group. Toa watches a movie and plays, and Sweetling can use the time as a study hall to do co-op work, or she can take her netbook and be online, or she can watch a movie with the other kids.)

Check out what others have done this week on Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Kindness Countdown: 13

I love these stories.

A friend of my husband's has fallen into hard times. He and his family are about to get evicted from their home, and many other things have decided to happen all at once. The situation is so bad that his church is not able to help them out. Since he's a landscaper/painter, we've hired him to so several things around our house. Instead of waiting for the job to be finished, we've decided to do a "pay as you go" system. Since he's a proud sort, I didn't want to embarrass him with obvious donations. Instead, I've been padding my payments with extra to help him out for the next month or so. I'm blessed to have a job that allows me to support my family, even though that means I'm away from home a lot, and I have enough to share without hesitation.

I hope you get all 40 wishes!

To read the rest of the stories, click here. 

WFMW: Hearty Hamburgers

Yes, this is a Works for Me Wednesday idea. Yes, I know it technically isn't Wednesday. See, if I wait till Wednesday to post this....I'll forget. So, I'm posting this now, when I'm thinking of it and have the chance, and then I'll McLinky it over on We Are THAT Family on, gasp, Wednesday. I'm sneaky that way.

Simple, delicious, very filling, recipe for hamburgers. This recipe makes about 6 substantial hamburgers. If you need more, the recipe is very easy to double.

Ingredients:

One to one and a half pounds ground meat (beef or turkey, your choice)
Half a box of stuffing (unprepared, any flavor, save the other half for another time)
One egg

Preparations:

Preheat your grill, or preheat the broiler in your oven. Meanwhile, in a bowl, with your hands, mix together the ground meat, the half box of stuffing, and an egg.  Shape into patties about the size of your palm, and flatten slightly. This should make about 6 patties.

Cooking:

Grill, or, cook under the broiler in your oven. Broil a few inches from the heat. After 4-5 minutes, flip the burgers with a spatula. Broil another 4-5 minutes on the other side.

Use a spatula to move the burgers to a clean plate. Top with cheese, if desired. Serve on buns with your favorite toppings.

Kindness Countdown: 12

You can see from the first sentence that the friend who send me this response to my birthday wishes is a woman after my own heart ;)

I didn't forget to do the random act of kindness I just forgot to email you when it was done. :) Well actually it was already planned before you gave me the card but I'll take what I can get.

For mine I "tried" to take the kids [of a pregnant friend who has been put on full bedrest] for the day. I figured the mom would need a break. I did successfully get to take the little girl but the little boy woke up that day with a fever so he stayed home with Mom and Dad. Anyway my kids and I took their little girl swimming at the Y, to play at our house and out to eat at McDonalds to play at their playland.

We also gave the family a giftcard to Outback. The idea was that they would get a quiet lunch away from the kids but since the little boy was sick I told them to just use it when they got the chance.

I'm also carrying around two bags of girl clothes that I have to give away to people at church. There are two families that usually go through the bags and divy them up. Oh and some company has decided that I had a baby, gee I don't remember that so I've also got formula that I plan to drop off at the church nursery for someone to take.

Hope you get the rest of your responses soon.

In other news, my sister is starting a blog to keep track of donations we've received, and items we still need for my brother. We haven't been able to get in touch with my brother since Easter. The last I had heard, he was still looking for a more permanent place for he and his family to stay. The cell phone reception in East Nowhere is pretty spotty, so its not unusual to not be able to get through to him. Having a call that actually connects to his cell is like winning the cell phone tower lottery.

Here are the kids' clothing and shoe sizes. We especially need clothes for the girl who is a size 5/6 (May) and the boy (Shay).

Shoe sizes-
Kay- 6 1/2 womens
May- 9 1/2 womens
Shay- 7 mens

Shirt sizes--
Kay-- XS/S womens
May-- M womens
Shay-- M/L mens

Pant sizes--
Kay-- 0,1 womens/juniors?
May-- 5,6 womens
Shay-- 28-30 mens

The blog should be up today, and I'll post a link to it as soon as I have it.

Kindness Countdown: 10 and 11

No, I haven't lost count. I am repeating number 10 on purpose. The doer of a previously confidential reply gave me permission to post hers as long as I wasn't putting any names with it, which I haven't been :) I'm loving all my Birthday Wishes!

So, without further ado, number 10,

I have a friend going through a rough patch in her marriage. It was suggested to her that she do some random acts of kindness of her own for her husband - even when she's not feeling particularly kind towards him at the moment. Some days this is a struggle for her. In honor of your birthday I'm going to give her a copy of The Love Dare to help her with some creative ways to show love to him during this difficult time.

And number 11...

One of my girls from the seventh grade life group came up to me after youth group last night. She said she performed an act of kindness for me and she gave some clothes to Goodwill. Way to go my girl!

Someone else at church asked me if it was "too late" to do an act of kindness for my birthday. Of course not! I'd still like to receive 29 more responses :)

Entrepeneur

After Bible study on Tuesday monring, I try to check our church's small food pantry. If new food donations have come in, I shelve them. If any bags of food have been given away, I bag up some more food. (I try to keep a few bags on hand. Our pantry doesn't have specific hours, but occasionally persons will stop by the church asking for some help with groceries or someone on staff will become aware of a family in need. Either way, its nice for the staff to have bags of food that are already pre-packed. I try to ensure that each group of bags have a few meals that can be put together from the contents of the bag as well as a few pantry staples like peanut butter, jelly, and cereal.)

Usually, it only takes me ten to fifteen minutes to shelve donations and restock bags of food. I have a list of food items that go into each group of bags, so I can be efficient and consistant. This week, however, I walked into the little room that holds our food pantry and immediately noticed that there were several bags of new donations as well as one group of bags which had been given away. I stepped into the room and opened one of the cabinets, and thats when the smell hit me. Now, I don't have a very good sense of smell, so an odor has to be really strong for me to notice it as all. I also am not very good at precisely identifying the source or the type of smell. So, I couldn't tell what exactly might be making the odor, I just knew something smelled really bad. We don't have any means of refridgeration, so all our food items are canned or boxed non-perishables, still, something smelled really, really bad.

I began pulling boxed food out first, thinking something must have gotten wet and turned nasty. Terrible images started filling my head. I won't share any of them here. You're welcome. Not finding anything, I started checking experiation dates...which I didn't expect would lead anywhere, since I though another volunteer had told me she did that at Thanksgiving. Sadly, I began finding post dated food. I pulled it out, but still couldn't find the source of the odor.

Frustrated, I went to the office and got help. The women who came to help identified the smell from the hallway. It was the drain in the floor of the room, and had nothing to do with the food pantry at all. Some bleach was poured down the drain, which seemed to resolve that problem.

But by now, I had emptied a good portion of the cabinet, and had found a few past-dated food items. I decided to just continue to clean out the cabinet and to check all the sell-by dates. I brought Sweetling in to help, and had Toa of Boy take past-date items out to set them on a table in the little atrium area near the secondary entrance to the church.

As we were working, pastor walked by. I heard him asking Toa if Toa was setting up a store. Without missing a beat, Toa answered, "$4.99! Anything on the table, $4.99!" Pastor came up the back hall to find me and ask me about new shelving solutions. He also told me of the interchange between himself and Toa. As he was walking back out, he passed by Toa's table again. This time Toa offered to sell him anyting from the table for just a dollar an item.

It took us two hours, but we checked every item, reorganized the cabinet, shelved the new donations, and repackaged some bags of food. We placed a sign on Toa's table, which was beautifully organized and arranged to display his wares. We put a sign on the table, "past-date; please take." I can't put the past-date food in bags to give out as part of our food pantry ministry, but I didn't want to throw the food away either. But, as long as people know that the food was past its sell by date, and elected to take them anyway, then I can still use the food to be a blessing to someone.

It was well past our normal lunchtime by the time we were done. We still had some errands to run, and they had both been such a big help, so we splurged and went to Wendy's for lunch. We took our food to go, and ate on the lawn outside the library.

And thus, Toa's first entrepreneur enterprise came to a glorious end.

Kindness Countdown: 7, 8, 9, and 10

I've been letting some of these pile up in my inbox!

First I like to say Happy Birthay big 40. I just wanted you to know how God had just placed on my heart to do something for someone Sunday; and just as I was walking out the door you give me you card about how you wanted to celebrate your 40th birthday. I was thinking that was right on time. God set me up ! God had me frame a poem he had me come across years ago, to let someone know how special they are in his sight and how much he loves them.

I pray you day is filled with lots of love and happiness.

And...

Here is the candle I am lighting for your cake. The act of encouragement I completed last week was for a co-workers daughter. Over the past year and a half this young lady has become homeless after being caught shop lifting in Western Hills with her 5 year old son and being fired from her job for erratic behavior. She was diagnosed with bipolar illness and her mom (my co-worker) has assumed custody of her 5 year old son.

She on a rare occasion will come to see her mom in the office and looks lost and forlorn. (As a teenager she experimented with lesbianism and sex outside marriage, been beat by her boyfriend, drugs, multiple school changes, etc) I have tried to reach out to her on the rare occasion I get to see her but was not successful before. (Her mom had told me she was depressed and disappointed with herself and felt unlovable.)

I received your card about a week ago. Last week it happened! I went into her mom's office to say hello and she started adoring the bracelet I had on. She told me the history of cats eye stones and why she likes them so much. I then said something like,,, You know what, please understand what I am saying, I love you and I want you to have this. You are special. She said, oh no, you must be kidding this cost too much. I had an opportunity to tell her that it didn't matter the cost, I wanted her to have it and when I feel like I should give someone something I do that. I told her she had a purpose for living and that she is loveable and I wanted to give her something that would bring a smile to her face. She starting smiling and couldn't believe that I was giving her this for no reason. I told her that I also had a matching necklace I would give to her mom to pass along. She hugged me and I told her to smile more often.

Later that week I have her mom the matching necklace. Her mom told me that she ( her daughter) is having a hard time believing she is loveable and this my giving allowed them to have a discussion about love.

I hope you enjoy this act of encouragement and kindness and on for your birthday.

I sure did!

And I had two more reports of acts of kindness, but I was asked to keep both of those completely confidential, so I will.

Update on my brother's house....the kids stayed with their grandma for a few days. They were supposed to go back to school today, but that can't quite happen till they have a new home. (Their grandma lives a little over an hour away from their school.) My brother met with the Red Cross, who gave him a 'cash card' good for purchasing food and some new clothing. He spent Easter weekend trying to find a new place to live, but said it was nearly impossible, because offices and whatnot are all closed for the Easter weekend. He was planning on doing a lot of legwork today to try to line up something.

Mama called and talked to the kids on Easter. We got a list of all their clothing sizes, which I'll be posting soon. I have one friend with teenage boys who is checking to see if they have anything that will fit my nephew. If, anyone else has something they can donate, that would be awesome. Once my brother gets a new place, they will be in need of household items as well (dishes, towels, blankets, etc). My sister might be working on a web-based list, so we can keep track of what they have been given, and what they still need.

Thank you for all your prayers and support!